Feature
Description

Controlling
Process Related QCI on S6A

In Release 20.0,
MME has been enhanced to support new standardized QCIs 65, 66, 69 and 70. Also,
MME also supports operator specific (non-standard) QCIs from 128 to 254. The
non-standard QCIs provides Operator Specific QoS for M2M and other mission
critical communications.

The
operator-defined-qci command under the QoS profile
configuration is provisioned to enable or disable Operator Specific QCI. When
enabled, MME accepts Operator Specific QCI values (128-254) both from HSS and
PGW. If not enabled, MME will reject the procedure on receiving any Operator
Specific QCI value.

Additionally, this
chapter describes the mapping of operator specific QCIs to Pre-Release8 QoS
parameters during a handover to UTRAN/GERAN.

The Operator
Specific QCI Support feature is license controlled. Contact your Cisco Account
or Support representative for information on how to obtain a license.

The Operator
Specific QCI feature provides the following functionalities:

MME provides a
CLI to enable/disable 'operator-defined-qci' under QOS-Profile.

Operator
Specific QCI value ranges from 128 to 254.

The new
standardized QCI values 65, 66, 69 and 70 is accepted for configuration under
all existing CLIs that involves QCI.

QCI validation
is performed during configuration to avoid invalid values.

Existing QOS
control on all bearers is extended to the new QCIs values. A specific QCI or a
range of QCIs can be associated to a Bearer Control Profile under QoS-Profile.
An operator specific QCI can be re-mapped to another QCI using this Bearer
Control Profile. Bearer level parameters such as ARP, MBR, GBR values can be
configured independently for default/dedicated bearer along with action such as
prefer-as-cap or
pgw-upgrade in the Bearer Control Profile.

MME rejects the
default/dedicated bearers with QCIs that are configured to be rejected under
QoS-Profile.

MME provides
CLI configuration under the Bearer Control Profile to map Operator Specific QCI
to Pre-Release8 QoS parameters or a standard QCI.

The
standardized QCI mapping is defined according to the TS 23.401 3GPP
specification.

Every Standard
QCI GBR/Non-GBR is associated with a priority level as shown below:

QCI

Resource Type

Priority

1

GBR

2

2

GBR

4

3

GBR

3

4

GBR

5

5

Non-GBR

1

6

Non-GBR

6

7

Non-GBR

7

8

Non-GBR

8

9

Non-GBR

9

65

GBR

0.7

66

GBR

2

69

Non-GBR

0.5

70

Non-GBR

5.5

Priority
Level 1 has the highest priority and in case of congestion lowest priority
level traffic would be the first to be discarded.

The
operator specific QCIs from 128 to 254 shall have the lowest priority. These
priority values are considered while deriving resultant QoS values for the
Minimum and Reject-if-exceed actions configured in prefer-as-cap or pgw-upgrade

The
qci-reject CLI under QoS-Profile is modified to accept
Operator Specific QCI values.

Note

MME supports
standardized QCIs from 1 to 9. It accepts the new standardized QCI values 69
and 70 for default bearer creation and 65, 66, 69 and 70 for dedicated bearer
creation. Any other QCI value is considered invalid.

Standardized
Non-GBR QCI values 69 and 70, and operator specific QCI values in the range 128
to 254 enabled using the
operator-defined-qci CLI under QoS-Profile is accepted from
the subscription (HSS). If the CLI is not enabled, MME will reject all Operator
Specific values.

Standardized QCI
values 65, 66, 69 and 70, and operator specific QCI values in the range 128 to
254 enabled using the
operator-defined-qci CLI under QoS-Profile is accepted from
the S-GW. If the CLI is not enabled, MME will reject all Operator Specific
values.

Note

The
qci-reject CLI under QoS profile can be used to reject any
specific QCI value or a range of QCI values.

Standardized QCI values are accepted even if the operator-defined-qci CLI is
not enabled.

Mapping of
Operator Specific QCIs to Pre-Release8 QoS parameters is supported for
successful handover of bearers to UTRAN/GERAN during handoff

A new CLI is
implemented in MME to map standard or non-standardized QCI's to PreRelease8QoS
parameters so that the bearers are transferred during a handover to Gn-Gp SGSN.
The mapped QoS values would be sent in GTPv1 SGSN-Context-Response or
Forward-Relocation-Request messages to peer SGSN.

One of the
following values can be used to map EPC QoS from non-standard QCIs to 3GPP
pre-release8 QoS:

To support
mapping, a new CLI is added in the Bearer Control Profile Configuration Mode.
If this configuration is not available, MME uses background class values as
default, and maps the QCIs to the background class and its associated QoS
parameters.

The Non-Standard and Operator Specific QCI feature complies with the
following standards:

qci indicates the QoS
class. Its value ranges from 1 to 9. When QCI is configured, the corresponding
mapping takes place based on 3GPP TS 23.401.

class
indicates the UMTS traffic classified into the following
categories:

background

conversational

interactive

streaming

thp
Traffic handling priority specifies the relative importance
of handling all SDUs that belong to the UMTS bearer compared to the SDUs of
other bearers. The priority value ranges from 1 to 3, where the value 1 holds
the highest priority. The predefined thp value is 3

sig-ind
toggles the state of the signal. The values are either 0 or
1.

src-stat-desc
toggles the state of the signal. The values are either 0 or
1.

sdu error-ratio
Service Data Unit (SDU) Error ratio indicates the fraction
of SDUs lost or detected as error packets. SDU error ratio is defined only for
conforming traffic. The range is an integer ranging from 1 to 7. The ratio
ranges from 10^-1 to 10^-6. Allowed values are 1(10^-2), 2(7*10^-3), 3(10^-3),
4(10^-4), 5(10^-5), 6(10^-6) and 7(10^-1). The predefined minimum value is 1.

min-transfer-delay
defines the maximum delay for 95th percentile of the delay
distributed for all delivered SDUs during the lifetime of a bearer service. The
delay value ranges from 10 to 40,000 milliseconds. The predefined minimum value
is 100.

The delay for
an SDU is defined as the time from request to transfer and SDU at one SAP to
its delivery at the other SAP.

Monitoring and
Troubleshooting Operator Specific QCI

Non-Standard
and Operator Specific QCI Support Show Command(s) and/or Outputs

This section
provides information on how to monitor and troubleshoot the Non-Standard and
Operator Specific QCI Support feature.

For information on
troubleshooting, please refer to the Monitoring and Troubleshooting section in
the
QoS Profile
Support chapter in the
MME Administration
Guide

Monitor the
configuration of Non-Standard and Operator Specific QCI feature, by using the
following command:

show quality-of-service-profile full all

On executing the above show command, the following new field is
displayed:

Operator Defined QCI

show
bearer-control-profile full all

This command is
used to display QoS parameters configured for mapping Operator Specific QCI to
3GPP Pre-Release8 parameters

On executing the
above command, the following new fields are displayed:

pre-rel8-qos-mapping

Class

traffic handling priority

sdu error ratio

minimum transfer delay

source stats descriptor

signaling indication

QCI value

show mme-service
statistics esm-only verbose

A new counter is
added to monitor Operator Specific QCIs. This command is used to display the
total number of bearers using Operator Specific QCIs.